It’s almost April and that means it’s almost time for the Orilium Magical Readathon’s Spring Equinox! I’m so excited! I’m going to try to read a book for each prompt, plus the guild book club selection and any side quests (looks like this equinox it’ll involve the Lore professor 👀).
My April TBR for the Spring Equinox 2024 prompts
I’ve also ensured I either own these books or can get them from the library.
Each guild is a book club this time around and the House of the Arcane will be reading Godkiller by Hannah Kaner. If I need to, I can also use Godkiller for a couple of the prompts, but I’m hoping not to DNF any books. 🤞🏻
Will you be doing the Orilium Magical Readathon with me next month? If so, what are you most excited about?
Better late than never! Here’s what I read in February with a brief review for each.
Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
If you’re looking for an epic fantasy saga that’s not set in a Eurocentric setting, look no further than the Daevabad trilogy. Kingdom of Copper is the second book in this trilogy and is well narrated by Soneela Nankani.
Tendu: Dancing in the Castle by Ailish Sinclair
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A light and fun romance set in the ballet world with touches of magic. Do check trigger warnings as it turns into a thriller at the end. Despite the book having trouble sticking to one genre, I enjoyed it.
Cabriole: Dancing in the City by Ailish Sinclair
⭐️⭐️
Unfortunately I cannot say the same for the sequel. It was filled with too much unnecessary drama for me.
The Curse of the Pharaohs by Elizabeth Peters
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The second book in the Amelia Peabody series is a fun reimagining of The Hound of the Baskervilles in an Egyptian archaeological setting.
Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Recommended to me by a friend, this book taught me some useful negotiating tactics I’ve used to good effect in real life. I also enjoyed Chris Voss’ stories from his time as an FBI negotiator.
The Mummy Case by Elizabeth Peters
⭐️⭐️⭐️
One of my least favorite Amelia Peabody books because it takes place in England instead of in Egypt. It also features some thoroughly disagreeable children.
Nöthin’ But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the ‘80s Hard Rock Explosion by Tom Beaujour and Richard Bienstock
✨⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
My first 5 star read for February! A must-read for any fan of ‘80s hard rock, this book is entirely constructed of interviews from the people who were there at the time. You’ll get delicious backstage gossip and come away with great respect for the sheer grit and hard work these musicians put in.
Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World by Mark Pendergrast
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mark Pendergrast really did the work to research this book, even going to Columbia and picking coffee beans himself. A fascinating and eye opening look at a commodity many can’t do without.
Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity by Michele Norris
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This was fascinating and eye-opening. A very thought-provoking read about Americans’ thoughts on race, based on six word sentences submitted to the author as part of The Race Card Project. A surprisingly rich conversation arises from just six words, though I did find it overly repetitive at times. If I had submitted six words, they would have been, “Celtic pride is not necessarily racist.”
Lion in the Valley and The Deeds of the Disturber by Elizabeth Peters
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Two more installments in the Amelia Peabody series.
Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
⭐️⭐️⭐️
The narrator, Michael Kramer, took some getting used to and is a little on the dry and monotonous side. Otherwise I enjoyed this mashup of a classic heist and thief saves the world story with a few twists. I read this book for the February Year in Aeldia 2024 prompt and plan to continue the series next month. I’m in a great buddy read chat for this series and feel like I’ve found friends there. That motivates me to keep going.
Small Town, Big Magic by Hazel Beck
⭐️⭐️⭐️
It’s a romance with magic in and sometimes the plot was moved forward by means of the idiot ball. But I did like it enough I got the sequel on sale and intend to listen to it. Make of that what you will.
Voyage of the Damned by Frances White
✨⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨
My second five star read of February! This book features a Murder on the Orient Express-style murder mystery, magic, snark with heart, and gay romance. I am so glad I got a physical copy instead of waiting to find out if there will be an audiobook (which I still devoutly hope will happen with a decent narrator). In this case you can judge a book by its gorgeous cover. I absolutely loved it!
That wraps up my reading for February 2024! Comment below if you’ve read or plan to read any of these books and your thoughts. Hope to see you back here for the next blog post!
I’ll be tracking my progress towards this goal on StoryGraph.
2. Complete Year in Aeldia 2024
The Year in Aeldia 2023 challenge map
In 2023, G of Book Roast made a year-long choose your own adventure style reading quest for Magical Readathon: Orilium participants called A Year in Aeldia. It was easy to complete as you chose only one prompt per month. It was good fun and helped fill the void between readathons. If G makes one for 2024, I will complete it.
3. Read all the prompts for both Orilium semesters
The Orilium Craftsmage badge. I am currently a Craftsmage apprentice.
If you haven’t heard of it yet, G of Book Roast has created the Magical Readathon: Orilium. In this readathon you pretend to study at a magical university named Orilium. This will be my third year participating and I’m looking forward to it! I will aim to complete the prompts required for my calling, Craftsmage, during the readathon months, but will also complete the rest of the prompts, no matter how long it takes.
4. Read Les Miserables in one year
Cover of the Penguin Classics audiobook edition of Les Miserables
I joined a group from the Orilium Discord whose goal is to read the entire, unabridged Les Miserables in 2024. I’m looking forward to this challenge and am already enjoying discussions with the group. I have chosen the Penguin Classics edition translated by Christine Donougher, performed by an ensemble cast including Adeel Akhtar, Adrian Scarborough, Natalie Simpson, Emma Fielding, and John Owen-Jones. I chose this edition because it is noted for the excellence of Donougher’s translation and reviews indicate the narration is faithful to the text and includes footnotes. The audiobook is also divided into chapters which will make it easy for me to read one chapter a day.
5. Do more buddy reads
I recently did my first buddy read outside of a book club. I quite enjoyed it and made a new friend! (Hi, Justé!) I think it’ll be good for my mental health to participate in more buddy reads and meet more bookworms this way. I’ve already signed up to buddy read the Daevabad trilogy and the Throne of Glass series in the new year!
6. Revive my blog and review what I read
And I’m making a good faith start on this goal now by overhauling the blog URL and design and writing this post!
7. Spend less on books
I want to read more of the books I already own and try to get as many other titles as I can through the library or BARD. (BARD is a service provided by the National Library Service. It provides free access to audiobooks to blind and disabled patrons.)
8. Have fun!
The most important goal on this list! If I am not having fun, I will change or even abandon these goals. The goal is not to stress myself out but to add more enjoyment to my life.
What are your reading goals for 2024? Share them in the comments!
A reluctant medium discovers the ties that bind can unleash a dangerous power in this compelling Malaysian-set contemporary fantasy.
When Jessamyn Teoh starts hearing a voice in her head, she chalks it up to stress. Closeted, broke and jobless, she’s moving back to Malaysia with her parents – a country she last saw when she was a toddler.
She soon learns the new voice isn’t even hers, it’s the ghost of her estranged grandmother. In life, Ah Ma was a spirit medium, avatar of a mysterious deity called the Black Water Sister. Now she’s determined to settle a score against a business magnate who has offended the god–and she’s decided Jess is going to help her do it, whether Jess wants to or not.
Drawn into a world of gods, ghosts, and family secrets, Jess finds that making deals with capricious spirits is a dangerous business, but dealing with her grandmother is just as complicated. Especially when Ah Ma tries to spy on her personal life, threatens to spill her secrets to her family and uses her body to commit felonies. As Jess fights for retribution for Ah Ma, she’ll also need to regain control of her body and destiny – or the Black Water Sister may finish her off for good.
Why You Should Listen
~Because Book~
Couldn’t put this one down! If you’ve even thought in passing of checking this one out, DO IT! Jess moves to Malaysia with her parents, only to wind up possessed by her grandmother’s ghost. Ah Ma was the medium for the god Black Water Sister and is determined to have Jess become the god’s next medium so the god can take revenge on a developer who plans to redevelop her temple. Of course Jess, who spent most of her life in the US, has no idea what she’s agreeing to and quickly gets in over her head. To be fair, she does try to bargain with Ah Ma, but knowing the duplicitous nature of many spirits, we were anticipating betrayal. If only Jess had read the Dresden Files! 😂 Jess must figure out who to trust, while juggling complicated family dynamics, cultural expectations, and a secret lesbian romance. Zen Cho does an excellent job balancing insider and outsider cultural perspectives, making this story accessible to any reader. She keeps the twists coming and the ending is unforeseen, powerful, and satisfying.
~Because Narrator~
Catherine Ho does a brilliant job narrating. So brilliant we’re disappointed she’s not narrating Zen Cho’s upcoming short story collection Spirits Abroad. Emily Woo Zeller, who seems to be Audible’s go-to for female Asian narration, was tapped instead. And Zeller is great. But Catherine Ho really gets the potent combination of emotion, magic, and gritty reality in Black Water Sister and brings it all out for the listener. While she does use accents for some characters, it’s never difficult to understand and all the voices are distinct.
The very first sentence was confusing because it ends in a Hokien word. We weren’t expecting that and at first thought we had misheard. Keep going; the word will be explained. This was the only instance where the experience suffered from being audio, simply because we couldn’t tell it was a non-English word and not terrible narration or our hearing by looking at the text.
A Word to the Wise (Content Warnings)
Major: Sexual assault, homophobia, violence, manipulation/gaslighting, religious abuse.
Moderate: Heteronormativity.
Minor: Brief mention of drugs.
TL;DR
This audiobook was an amazing experience and we are looking forward to more from Zen Cho! Do yourself a favor and listen to or read this one!
Today we finished listening to part three of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer for our friend AdventuRyn’s Botany Book Club. (Join the fun live on Twitch at 4:00 PM Pacific every Monday!) We were really struck by the last essay in this section, “The Honorable Harvest”. In this essay Kimmerer explores what it means to harvest honorably, from ancient indigenous traditions to the aisles of today’s supermarkets. The keys are respect and reciprocity. At the end of the essay she talks about going shopping for pens and how she is unable to honorably harvest them because “everything [in the store] is dead.”
This immediately made us think about books because while many consider them to be dead objects, we firmly believe that each book has a soul. Many Native American peoples believe that stories are alive because they come to life as they are told by the storyteller. We don’t know if they would also regard books as alive, but we do. Stories come to life through their pages or via the audiobook narrator.
If books are alive, then they also deserve to be treated with respect and reciprocity. How can we practice honorable harvesting when we read?
Our answer is by taking our time. We show respect by paying careful attention. We do not rush. We do not cram tales in our mouth like Cookie Monster with a plate of cookies. We take time to savor them. To let each one into our heart and mind. To reciprocate by thinking about and discussing them. And finally, we pay the gift forward by recommending them to others who will cherish them.
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May is Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and we will be participating in ReadWithCindy’s 2021 Asian Readathon to celebrate! The readathon is meant to be a very accessible and easy to complete event that promotes Asian and Pacific Islander author and protagonist visibility. There are five challenges:
Read any book written by an Asian author.
Read any book featuring an Asian protagonist.
Read any book written by an Asian author in your favorite genre.
Read any nonfiction book written by an Asian author.
Read any book written by an Asian author that’s not US-centric.
You can fulfill multiple prompts with one book, but if you read multiple books, each book needs to be by an author of a different Asian heritage, because diversity! Not sure what counts as Asian? Cindy has a list! She also has a directory of books by Asian authors on StoryGraph to help you choose! We usually don’t care about the author’s ethnicity or gender as long as the writing is good, so the database was very helpful.
We decided to make this extra challenging for ourselves by adding a personal rule that we can’t count authors we’ve read before. Of course, you don’t have to, but we think this gets into the spirit of stretching horizons! 😄
On to our picks!
To fulfill challenges #1, 2, and 5, we decided to read The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey. We already had this delicious-looking mystery in our Audible library, but haven’t listened to it yet. We were attracted by the pro-feminist narrative, which promises a strong female lawyer who champions the titular widows in the face of cultural tensions that escalate to murder. Add the 1920s Bombay setting, and we were sold! This book promises to tick many of our favorite boxes.
As delicious as The Widows of Malabar Hill sounds, if we were forced to pick a favorite genre it would be fantasy. So for challenge #3, we selected Black Water Sister by Zen Cho. Coming to Audible on May 11, 2021 and available now in paperback and Kindle, Black Water Sister looks like an exciting ride!
Reluctant medium Jessamyn Teoh returns home to Malaysia where her grandmother’s spirit contacts her, demanding Jessamyn take revenge on a gang boss on behalf of Black Water Sister, the diety her grandmother served. Of course, it’s a dangerous mission made even more perilous because grandmother and Black Water Sister may not be what they seem. We’re really looking forward to this book and just hope it doesn’t get too dark for us, since it is also marketed as a thriller.
Surprisingly, challenge #4, nonfiction by an Asian author, was the most difficult to find. We typically avoid memoirs because they are often too sad or dark for us, but we expected it to be easy to find a science book by an Asian author. Guess that’s one stereotype we didn’t realize we believed busted! This readathon has already succeeded!
We spent a lot of time perusing the nonfiction part of the directory. We really appreciated StoryGraph’s content warnings feature, which lets other readers warn you of potentially triggering material. We’d click on an interesting-looking title, check the content warnings, and nope on out of there. We eventually settled on a book, but after talking to our friend AdventuRyn, we’re saving that one for Pride in June. Instead we will be joining them in reading World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. The Audible version is read by the author, and from the sample she gives it a cozy, exciting bedtime fairy story feel! We’re hoping we are in for a book in the vein of Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In other words, a beautiful and poetic exploration of some of nature’s wonders.
Of course we will review these books as we read (or listen, lol) to them, so stay tuned to this blog for more!
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We recently discovered The StoryGraph thanks to ReadWithCindy’s 2021 Asian Readathon (check out our picks here). According to the website, “The StoryGraph helps you track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics and themes.” Intrigued, we decided to take it for a test drive.
A Few Caveats
We’ve only checked out The StoryGraph on our iPhone, so keep in mind that the desktop version may have features we didn’t get to experience. But let’s be honest, all major features should work on all versions of a site, especially when users can’t opt to switch to desktop mode. If we can’t do it on our iPhone, it might as well not exist. 😆
It’s also important to note the site is still in beta mode and actively adding new features while troubleshooting existing ones. The StoryGraph seems very responsive to user demand and it’s fair to expect many of the limitations we experienced will be temporary.
The StoryGraph Difference: Things to Love
The StoryGraph’s UI is clean and minimalist. We appreciate the calming, uncluttered vibe. It does lack a dark mode, though, so photosensitive viewers may want to use a dark reader. Sign up is quick, easy, and doesn’t ask for sensitive information. We haven’t been spammed since we signed up, either! The StoryGraph can import your Goodreads library for you, but we decided to start with a fresh slate.
Let’s talk about how The StoryGraph stands out from the crowd. Two things are at the heart of the StoryGraph experience: moods and statistics.
The StoryGraph’s tagline is “Because life’s too short to read a book you’re not in the mood for.” Thus, books are primarily judged on feels. In addition to the mood list to the right, readers can indicate a book’s pace, length, whether it’s plot- or character-driven, and even content warnings. These are great metrics for deciding whether a book is a good fit for you. We’d like a few more mood options, but the current set covers a lot of ground.
We’re especially excited about the ability to flag content warnings! This is extremely useful. You can note whether potentially triggering material is major, moderate, or mild. We would like the ability to do this if we haven’t finished a book, though. What if the material was so triggering we had to stop reading? That’s important information for others to know without having to check out the written review. It should be part of the aggregate data. It also needs to be easier to add content warnings to the menu. The StoryGraph figures this is covered by tags, but as far as we can tell, tags are useless. The tagging function might as well not exist.
Of course, you can rate books you’ve read out of 5 stars, but The StoryGraph lets you do so to a quarter-star level of granularity! You can also add a written review and include links.
The StoryGraph takes all the data you’ve given it about what kind of books you enjoy and generates a reader profile. Even with little to go on, it had us pretty well pegged from the get-go.
This assessment gets more accurate the more you fill out your The StoryGraph library. Ours changed from the initial, “Mainly Reads fiction books that are adventurous, mysterious, and challenging. Typically chooses slow-paced books that are 300-499 pages long,” to adventurous, mysterious, funny, and fast-paced. The StoryGraph uses this profile to generate recommendations—which are pretty good—and pretty graphs of your reading stats. Unfortunately, there is a lag between updating the profile and the graphs, which can result in confusing mismatches like the one shown below.
Which is correct? In these screenshots, taken just a few seconds apart, our reader profile says we typically choose fast-paced books that are 300-499 pages long, but our stats say we typically choose slow-paced books under 300 pages.
The graphs are fun, though, and the way they crunch the days really does make it easier to find books you’ll love. The StoryGraph also sidesteps the Goodreads toxicity simply by not having a social media aspect. The only way to interact with others on the site is to follow them or join a reading challenge. Even so, it’s at a remove. “This is what I read and what I thought. The end.” It’s rather refreshing and adds to the chill vibe.
We’ve found the biggest reason to stay active on The StoryGraph are the reading challenges. These are a fun way to stretch your reading horizons. When you challenge yourself to read books that fit theprompts, you’ll find yourself adding new authors and genres to your TBR pile! It’s also easy to create your own reading challenges and you can keep them to yourself, share privately with friends, or make them public so anyone can join.
What Needs Work
Navigation overall is clunky. For example, if you use the reading journal feature to jot down a note about your reading and then save it, there is no button to add another entry on the resulting screen. You have to go back to the book’s page and press “track progress” and then “add note”.
It’s easy to search for and add books by title or author using the main search bar. Key word: or. As of this writing, you can’t do both. You cannot filter those results or search for tags. You can only filter results from the “Browse all books” search. As power searchers, we hate this with the same passion we hated Google doing away with Boolean operators. You can’t use the main search bar to find other users or reading challenges, either. That has to be done in their respective sections. Searching by ISBN doesn’t work, unless you’re in the “add a book/edition” dialogs (which, while we’re on the subject, aren’t user-friendly—and we say this with librarian training). The StoryGraph’s selection is mostly English titles that are currently in print. The site also isn’t set up to track journals and periodicals. We want to be able to search for anything using the main search bar, or at least have an advanced search mode that does that. If we have a physical copy, we also want to be able to use our phone camera to “scan” the barcode.
What would’ve been really useful would’ve been a way to import our Audible library and listening history. Unfortunately, The StoryGraph, like all the other reading sites out there, doesn’t cater to audiobook lovers. Their form for manually adding other editions makes it look like they are planning to correct this, since you can manually add an audiobook edition and input length in hours and minutes. We have yet to see an audiobook edition on The StoryGraph “in the wild”, though, probably because you have to add it yourself—a pain in the ass most users won’t have time for.
Even if you do add an audiobook edition, you can only track your reading progress by percentage read. That means we have to look at the progress bar in our audio player and guesstimate. The site should be able to do the math for you; just put in the hours and minutes you’ve listened so far and—lo!—a progress bar appears! But no, they want you to do division in base 60. Hopefully addressing these issues is in the works. We think it would help The StoryGraph stand out as a welcoming site for neurodivergent and disabled readers.
Our final complaint is that whoever designed the books and pages read goals is a sadistic bastard. We are here for fun. We really do not need the site to push our anxiety buttons by telling us we’re behind. Once we took a screenshot for this review, we deleted our goals for our mental health.
TL;DR:
Being able to find books based on what you’re in the mood for is fabulous!
Content Warnings! SO USEFUL! It needs to be easier to add CWs that aren’t on the list yet, though.
Reading challenges are what keep us coming back. They’re great fun!
Reader profiles, and thus recommendations, are very good with only limited data, which does the strength of their algorithms.
The site looks pretty and soothing, but needs a dark mode.
Love the lack of social media features! Makes it a chill, nontoxic environment.
Navigation is clunky and less-prominent features are hard to use.
Tags are pretty much useless. The function might as well not exist.
As much as we love ye olde paper books, The StoryGraph needs to get with the times and support audiobook and ebook readers.
Whoever designed the books and pages read progress reporting is a sadistic bastard. We do not recommend anyone with anxiety, perfectionism, or workaholism issues use this feature.
Most of the flaws are probably due to The StoryGraph being fairly new and primarily relying on librarian volunteers. Hopefully they’ll improve if the site continues to grow and gain traction.
Final Thoughts
We think we will be sticking with The StoryGraph for a while and encourage you to check it out for yourself if you haven’t yet! We look forward to the site growing into its shoes, so to speak, and are thrilled to have a site where we can share our love of books without getting overwhelmed by the social aspect.
Honeycomb's Hive 